ever since you came by here early in the summer. Look, here's a bush full ofripe ones. Those are green. Come over here." I came closer to him, to thebush of ripe berries. When I was on the ship, Arrem told me that manylanguages have a single word for sexual desire and the bond between mother andchild and the bond between soulmates and the feeling for one's home andworship of the sacred; they are all called love. There is no word that greatin my language. Maybe my mother is right, and human greatness perished in myworld with the people of the Before Time, leaving only small, poor, brokenthings and thoughts. In my language, love is many different words. I learnedone of them with Red Stone Man. We sang it together to each other. We made a brush house on a little cove of the creek, and neglected our gardens, butgathered many, many sweet berries. Mother had put a lifetime's worth ofnonconceptives in the little medicine kit. She had no faith in Sorovianherbals. I did, and they worked. But when a year or so later, in the GoldenTime, I decided to go out scouting, I thought I might go places where theright herbs were scarce; and so I stuck the little noncon jewel on the back ofmy left earlobe. Then I wished I hadn't, because it seemed like witchcraft.Then I told myself I was being superstitious; the noncon wasn't any morewitchcraft than the herbs were, it just worked longer. I had promised mymother in my soul that I would never be superstitious. The skin grew over thenoncon, and I took my soulbag and Borny's knife and the medicine kit, and setoff across the world. I had told Hyuru and Red Stone Man I would be leaving.Hyuru and I sang and talked together all one night down by the fiver. RedStone Man said in his soft voice, "Why do you want to go?" and I said, "To getaway from your magic, sorcerer," which was true in part. If I kept going tohim I might always go to him. I wanted to give my soul and body a larger worldto be in. Now to tell of my scouting years is more difficult than ever. CP! Awoman scouting is entirely alone, unless she chooses to ask a settled man forsex, or camps in an auntring for a while to sing and listen with the singingcircle. If she goes anywhere near the territory of a boygroup, she is indanger; and if she comes on a rogue she is in danger; and if she hurts herselfor gets into polluted country, she is in danger. She has no responsibilityexcept to herself, and so much freedom is very dangerous. In my fight earlobewas the tiny communicator; every forty days, as I had promised, I sent asignal to the ship that meant "all well." If I wanted to leave, I would sendanother signal. I could have called for the lander to rescue me from a badsituation, but though I was in bad situations a couple of times I neverthought of using it. My signal was the mere fulfillment of a promise tomy mother and her people, the network I was no longer part of, ameaningless communication. Life in the auntring, or for a settled man, isrepetitive, as I said; and so it can be dull. Nothing new happens. The mindalways wants new happenings. So for the young soul there is wandering andscouting, travel, danger, change. But of course travel and danger and changehave their own dullness. It is finally always the same otherness over again;another hill, another fiver, another man, another day. The feet begin to turnin a long, long circle. The body begins to think of what it learned back home,when it learned to be still. To be aware. To be aware of the grain of dustbeneath the sole of the foot, and the skin of the sole of the foot, and thetouch and scent of the air on the cheek, and the fall and motion of the lightacross the air, and the color of the grass on the high hill across the fiver,and the thoughts of the body, of the soul, the shimmer and ripple of colorsand sounds in the clear darkness of the depths, endlessly moving, endlesslychanging, endlessly new. So at last I came back home. I had been gone aboutfour years. Hyuru had moved into my old house when she left her mother'shouse. She had not gone scouting, but had taken to going to Red Stone CreekValley; and she was pregnant. I was glad to see her living there. The onlyhouse empty was an old half-ruined one too close to Hedimi's. I decided tomake a new house. I dug out the circle as deep as my chest; the digging tookmost of the summer. I cut the sticks, braced and wove them, and then daubedthe framework solidly with mud inside and out. I remembered when I had done

that with my mother long long ago, and how she had said, "That's right. That'sgood." I left the roof open, and the hot sun of late summer baked the mud intoclay. Before the rains came, I thatched the house with reeds, a triplethatching, for I'd had enough of being wet all winter. My auntring was more astring than a ring stretching along the north bank of the river for aboutthree kilos; my house lengthened the string a good bit, upstream from all theothers. I could just see the smoke from Hyuru's fireplace. I dug it into asunny slope with good drainage. It is still a good house. I settled down. Some of my time went to gathering and gardening and mending and all the dull,repetitive actions of primitive life, and some went to singing and thinkingthe songs and stories I had learned here at home and while scouting and thethings I had learned on the ship, also. Soon enough I found why women are gladto have children come to listen to them, for songs and stories are meant to beheard, listened to. "Listen!" I would say to the children. The children of theauntring came and went, like the little fish in the river, one or two or fiveof them, little ones, big ones. When they came, I sang or told storiesto them. When they left, I went on in silence. Sometimes I joined thesinging circle to give what I had learned traveling to the older girls. Andthat was all I did; except that I worked, always, to be aware of all Idid. By solitude the soul escapes from doing or suffering magic; it escapesfrom dullness, from boredom, by being aware. Nothing is boring if you areaware of it. It may be irritating but it is not boring. If it is pleasant thepleasure will not fail so long as you are aware of it. Being aware is thehardest work the soul can do, I think. I helped Hyuru have her baby, a girl,and played with the baby. Then after a couple of years I took the noncon outof my left earlobe. Since it left a little hole, I made the hole go all theway through with a burnt needle, and when it healed I hung in it a tiny jewelI had found in a rain when I was scouting. I had seen a man on the ship with ajewel hung in his ear that way. I wore it when I went out foraging. I keptclear of Red Stone Valley. The man there behaved as if he had a claim on me, aright to me. I liked him still, but I did not like that smell of magic abouthim, his imagination of power over me. I went up into the hills,northward. Apair of young men had settled in old North House about the time Icame home. Often boys got through boygroup by pairing, and often they stayedpaired when they left the Territory. It helped their chances of survival. Someof them were sexually paired, others weren't; some stayed paired, othersdidn't. One of this pair had gone off with another man last summer. The onethat stayed wasn't a handsome man, but I had noticed him. He had a kind ofsolidness I liked. His body and hands were short and strong. I had courted hima little, but he was very shy. This day, a day in the Silver Time when themist lay on the river, he saw the jewel swinging in my ear, and his eyeswidened. "It's pretty, isn't it?" I said. He nodded. "I wore it to make youlook at me," I said. He was so shy that I finally said, "If you only like sexwith men, you know, just tell me." I really was not sure. "Oh, no," he said,"no. No." He stammered and then bolted back down the path. But he looked back;and I followed him slowly, still not certain whether he wanted me or wanted tobe rid of me. He waited for me in front of a little house in a grove ofredroot, a lovely little bower, all leaves outside, so that you would walkwithin arm's length of it and not see it. Inside he had laid sweet grass, deepand dry and soft, smelling of summer. I went in, crawling because the door wasvery low, and sat in the summer-smelling grass. He stood outside. "Come in," Isaid, and he came in very slowly. "I made it for you," he said. "Now make a child for me," I said. And we did that; maybe that day, maybe another. Now I will tell you why after all these years I called the ship, not knowing even ifit was still there in the space between the planets, asking for the lander tomeet me in the barren land. When my daughter was born, that was my heart'sdesire and the fulfillment of my soul. When my son was born, last year, I knewthere is no fulfillment. He will grow toward manhood, and go, and fight andendure, and live or die as a man must. My daughter, whose name is Yedneke,Leaf, like my mother, will grow to womanhood and go or stay as she chooses. I